What is the FCC’s Role in Artificial Intelligence?

There are a few specific areas the Federal Communications Commission may focus on the potential and responsibility for AI in spectrum and communications networks generally:

• Spectrum access and interference mitigation. How will the ability of AI tools to enhance spectrum and access and mitigate potential interference be considered by the Office of Engineering Technology (OET) an the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WT) — particularly in light of the new policy statement? Additionally, although it is primarily the responsibility of the NTIA, how will these new tools impact the National Spectrum Strategy?

• Network reliability, competition and stability. How will we know where problems are? Whose responsibility is it to identify problems and correct them? Will this require the FCC to develop rules for cross-network cooperation and coordination?

• Privacy and other forms of consumer protection by design. All these tools require data for training and will be involved in ongoing monitoring and direction of people’s communications. A network must know precisely where to deliver a message, but it does not need to be able to report that information with specificity to those who do not need to know this data. A network can vastly improve efficient operation via AI tools, but the same tools can be used to prioritize traffic for business reasons rather than for reasons of network efficiency. It is not enough to prohibit certain sorts of bad behavior, we should do what we can to design the networks to make abuse as difficult as possible.

[Harold Feld is Senior Vice President at Public Knowledge.]